Here's a stat that should give hospital execs pause. According to a study, almost 60 percent of callers to hospital switchboards who sought physician referrals weren't successful. The Beryl Institute study analyzed more than 2,000 calls to hospital switchboards.
A prior Beryl study, which analyzed 300,000 calls, that 75 percent of callers who don't get through to a hospital switchboard on their first try won't try again. Sounds like there's some real problems with the way hospital switchboard operators are trained--and probably some issues in how the referral process is handled, too.
To find out more about the study:
- read this Dallas Business Journal item